Month: March 2008

Bold Truth-Teller

by dday

There’s video now of George Bush’s “farewell song” at last weekend’s Gridiron Club dinner. He hits all the high notes, treating tragedy, destruction and the end of any pretense of justice in America as misty water-colored memories, like he was some disinterested observer, like Billy Joel just recounting the history in “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”

And I can’t believe what I’m saying, and it may get me banned from Hullabaloo for life, but… what Chris Matthews said a few minutes ago:

Well, that was quite a hoot. All that joking from the President about Brownie, that guy in charge of the New Orleans disaster, and of course Scooter Libby, the guy involved in the CIA coverup. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s reporters, the best of them, laughing at events and political acts that warrant anything, I mean, anything but laughter. There is nothing, nothing funny about Bush’s reference to Brownie, that disastrous appointment followed by that catastrophic handling of the Katrina horror in New Orleans. Nothing funny about a war fought for bad intelligence, and a top aide, Scooter Libby, who committed perjury and obstruction of justice to cover it up. Nothing funny about a President, who commuted that sentence to keep the coverup protected. Otherwise, I’m sure it was an enjoyable get-together between journalists and the people they’re charged with covering.

This is of course true. I don’t know if Chris Matthews, who met his wife at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner 20 years ago and who has attended pretty much every one since, is really the guy to deliver the message. But it seems every so often he has to spout off like this to prove to himself that he has some sort of independence from the Village, that he’s some anti-establishment rabble rouser.

What’s more, it’s fine for Matthews to make this statement, but then following up and asking his cadre of reporters who he has on his show every day whether or not they attended, laughed and cheered at the President’s warblings, etc., would be nice.

UPDATE: From the comments:

Nah, he can be right from time to time, but the sackless part of this is that Bush is on his way out. The players can find that spine because the fucker isn’t up for re-election.

If McCain give this speech, Chris becomes butter. Funny. Ironic. Only a real-man can do this.

Instead, look at Bush’s WMD hilarity from the 2004 thing — only David Corn was pissed that everyone found it uproarious. Or look at how Matthews reacted to the Colbert situation from 2006.

It’s the measure of the man that he waited until just now to be sickened by the president’s cavalier attitude toward death, destruction and lies.

Yes, I was looking for some example of this for a little while here, and Google has finally given up the gold.

MATTHEWS: The funniest line of the night last Saturday night at the press dinner, which was — the president was excellent. We’re going to show a piece of the president and his body double, which is really funny, and quite nice of the president to do it, because it was kind of humble.

WALLACE: Self-deprecating.

MATTHEWS: Self-deprecating, yeah, to say the least. He said something about how the vice president, [Dick] Cheney, said he is a good man with a big heart. And then he paused and he goes, “Well, he is a good man.”

WALLACE: Yes. My favorite line was that he survived the shake-up.

MATTHEWS: Oh, that he did. Bush did. You’re great, Nicolle. You’re a great person. Thank you for coming over here to Hardball to our own home court. It’s very courageous for a White House person.

WALLACE: Thank you for having me. It was very nice.

MATTHEWS: Are you going to bring Dick Cheney along with you next time?

WALLACE: Sure.

MATTHEWS: I’m going to quote you.

The measure of a man, indeed.

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Fallon “Retires”

by digby

… as of today.

We talked about this the other day. He was clearly fired. His resignation letter mentions the Esquire article and how it makes it impossible to continue. He was arguably insubordinate, but this is such a high profile firing that it seems clear that this disagreement over Iran was very real.

The Esquire article is here.

Update: CNN military expert General David Grange (ret.) says that this is how an officer responds when he disagrees with an administration’s policies and feels decisions have been made that he can’t in good conscience carry out. I don’t know if Grange knows Fallon or knows his motives, but he seems to think that Fallon resigned in protest — which is actually worse than if he were fired. Read that Esquire article and you’ll see why.

Update II: Spencer Ackerman offers this analysis:

For a good summation of Fallon, the Esquire piece, and the resulting furor, check out this Tom Ricks piece in the Post from last week.

Gates said in a press conference just now that no one should think the move reflects any substantive change in policy. That sure won’t be how Teheran sees it. The Iranians will consider Fallon’s resignation to indicate that the bombing begins in the next five minutes. If the new Central Command chief is General Stanley McChrystal, who ran special operations in Iraq until recently (read: responses to Iranian activities), that’ll be a pretty solid indicator that Bush is going to make the most of his last months in office. McChrystal just got a different command, but that, of course, was before the military’s most prestigious combatant command just opened up. Teheran will look verrrrry closely at who gets the job.

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Vote!

by digby

Dear Friend, At this point it seems that all is lost on FISA. It looks like in the process of negotiating a compromise with the Senate, the House will be forced to have an up-or-down vote on retroactive immunity. We shouldn’t expect that vote to go our way. But rather than getting mad while we watch the Fourth Amendment go up in flames, we’re going to start getting even. We’ve picked out some of most reactionary Democrats, and are turning it over to progressive activists like you to decide who the worst offenders are. We’ll then run ads and robo-calls in their congressional districts to let their constituents know how poorly their Representative is representing their rights. Go here to cast your vote and chip in to the effort to hold Congress accountable:
http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/getevenforfisa We’re starting our effort to get even on several of the Blue Dog Democrats: John Barrow (GA-12), Leonard Boswell (IA-3), Chris Carney (PA-10), Brad Ellworth (IN-8), Zack Space (OH-18), and Heath Shuler (NC-11). This pack of conservatives may caucus the right way, but they actively work to undermine progressive values, including sending a letter to Speaker Pelosi last week encouraging her to grant the telecom companies retroactive immunity. Since the final votes haven’t been cast yet on FISA, hopefully we can shame some of them into righting their moral compass and voting against retroactive immunity. If not, we’ll make sure that each one of their constituents knows about it. Vote on your least favorite here:
http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/getevenforfisa Hopefully when it comes down to the wire, things will go our way, and the House Democrats will stand up for the rule of law. In the meantime, however, we would be naive not to start taking action to hold them accountable if they don’t. Thank you for taking action, Jane Hamsher, Glenn Greenwald, Howie Klein, and the Firedoglake Team P.S. This is just the first part of this effort. You can rest assured that we’ll hold Republicans accountable for their role too.

Glenn Greenwald has more.

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Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

by dday

This won’t come as news to anyone in the blogosphere, but the result of reviewing 600,000 Iraqi documents found that there was no link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. Period.

The Pentagon-sponsored study, scheduled for release later this week, did confirm that Saddam’s regime provided some support to other terrorist groups, particularly in the Middle East, U.S. officials told McClatchy. However, his security services were directed primarily against Iraqi exiles, Shiite Muslims, Kurds and others he considered enemies of his regime.

The new study of the Iraqi regime’s archives found no documents indicating a “direct operational link” between Hussein’s Iraq and al Qaida before the invasion, according to a U.S. official familiar with the report.

The Iraq-Al Qaeda link was cultivated through hundreds of the 935 false statements the Bush Administration made in the run-up to war. Without it, there would be no pivot from Afghanistan to Iraq, no case made to the public that both wars represented the same fight against terrorism.

Then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld claimed in September 2002 that the United States had “bulletproof” evidence of cooperation between the radical Islamist terror group and Saddam’s secular dictatorship.

Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell cited multiple linkages between Saddam and al Qaida in a watershed February 2003 speech to the United Nations Security Council to build international support for the invasion. Almost every one of the examples Powell cited turned out to be based on bogus or misinterpreted intelligence.

As recently as last July, Bush tried to tie al Qaida to the ongoing violence in Iraq. “The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is a crowd that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and children, many of whom are Muslims,” he said.

Where did all this now-discredited “evidence” come from? From whom was this bogus “intelligence” gathered? From those suspects who were tortured by the CIA.

Intelligence failures had much to do with the atrocity of September 11, but those had nothing to do with a lack of torture. Let me be clear on one crucial point: it is the terrorists whom we won over with humane methods in the 1990s who continue to provide the most reliable intelligence we have in the fight against al-Qaeda. And it is the testimony of terrorists we tortured after 9/11 who have provided the most unreliable information, such as stories about a close connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. I never regret that the FBI didn’t abuse its detainees. Had we done so, we would have had much less reliable intelligence, and we would have been morally debased. By instituting a policy of torture in the years following 9/11, we have recruited thousands to al-Qaeda’s side. It has been a tragic waste.

It is not just that torture is a dehumanizing and a debasing act, a recruiting poster for our enemies, and something that makes our own troops less safe. It’s that the information extracted as a result is completely unreliable. But of course that’s the point. Bogus intelligence making the President’s case for war is, to the Administration, the best intelligence money can buy.

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Journamalism

by digby

Newsweek does some serious journalism and interviews an important expert in the Spitzer case.

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Parting Shot?

by digby

There’s lots of new information in this NY Times article about the allegedly suspicious financial transactions that led the Feds to Spitzer’s call girl habit. It’s still vague about how these scrappy investigators came to be interested in the finances of the governor of New York, but I assume that will be dealt with. Meanwhile, I found this tidbit interesting:

The rendezvous that established Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s involvement with high-priced prostitutes occurred last month in one of Washington’s grandest hotels, but the criminal investigation that discovered the tryst began last year in a nondescript office building opposite a Dunkin’ Donuts on Long Island, according to law enforcement officials.
[…]

Soon, the I.R.S. agents, from the agency’s Criminal Investigation Division, were working with F.B.I. agents and federal prosecutors from Manhattan who specialize in political corruption.The inquiry, like many such investigations, was a delicate one. Because the focus was a high-ranking government official, prosecutors were required to seek the approval of the United States attorney general to proceed. Once they secured that permission, the investigation moved forward.

I’m just wondering when exactly last year that permission was sought. Rove and Gonzales both resigned in August of 07 under a cloud for a plot to fire US Attorneys who refused to trump up charges of “voter fraud” and pursue cases against Democratic politicians. Mukasey was sworn in in November. Peter D. Keisler was acting attorney general during the interim. Which one ordered the investigation?

Update: Fired US Attorney David Iglesias is not sitting down and shutting up. He’s written a book, due out in June. Dahlia Lithwick discusses it here.

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Let’s Talk About Prostitutes.

by dday

No, not those. I mean the legal prostitution ring that is our national press corps. Three stories from that ring caught my eye today.

First you have this homemade video from the now-legendary John W. McCain barbecue at his Sedona ranch, where you can literally see how cheap the transaction of perks and access for favorable coverage truly is.

Really, a spread of ribs and tamales is enough to guarantee a press corps in the tank for an entire election campaign. That’s really all it takes. These guys won’t be working at the Emperor’s Club anytime soon.

You can see precisely how this transaction plays out by listening to Ana Marie Cox openly discuss the complete abrogation of any journalistic responsibility when it comes to McSame:

KURTZ: You’ve spent a lot of time with McCain. He spends hours and hours answering reporters’ questions…. Is there a downside to his policy of nearly unlimited media access?

COX: Well, you just saw it. It’s true that he can — especially — it’s almost always someone who has not — who hasn’t been with the campaign, you know, through it all that’s going to make a call that makes him look bad. […]

KURTZ: But that suggests that the people who have been traveling with him regularly… become part of the bubble, part of the team?

COX: Become part of the bubble, and also, I mean, I think what happens is that you — if you’ve been covering him for a long time, there’s a sense that, well, he does that all the time, it’s not worth reporting, because he does — he’s a cranky old man. I mean, to be quite frank.

You know, like, and also, I’ve gotten much tougher terseness than Bumiller got just there. And…

KURTZ: But the cameras weren’t rolling.

COX: But the cameras weren’t rolling. And also, we wrote it off to, like, you know, he hadn’t had his fifth cup of Starbucks today.

In other words, as long as a politician talks to you and gives you a lot of soundbites you can use to fluff up your pieces, you can just let slide little things like flip-flopping on the subject of torture. and pretending to be committed to American principles of ethics and morality while supporting a veto of the same principles.

But maybe the most egregious example of media whoredom came over the weekend. The President, as I mentioned, just vetoed banning waterboarding, maybe the clearest sign that American democracy has become a joke and a dictator has been installed under our noses. The damage to our nation, our moral standing, our ability to act globally, is unquestionable, and the entire press corps knows this. But they won’t let it get in the way of their good time.

President Bush said an early farewell to political Washington on Saturday night, making his first appearance on the stage of the Gridiron Club of Washington journalists.

Bush surprised the white-tie audience of more than 600, including Supreme Court justices, Cabinet members and lawmakers, by appearing as the final act of the club’s annual revue. To the tune of “Green Green Grass of Home,” he sang about looking forward to his return to Texas.

Bush has spoken at the Gridiron Club dinner before, but this was the first time he sang, donning a cowboy hat and joining the chorus to say farewell. He appeared at the behest of Gridiron president Carl Leubsdorf, Washington bureau chief of The Dallas Morning News.

Founded in 1885, the invitation-only Gridiron Club is the oldest organization for Washington journalists. . . .

The audience was surprised by Bush’s appearance and rose to applaud his attempt at singing.

The difference between the girls working at the Emperor’s Club and the Washington press corps is that the Emperor’s Club girls know exactly what kind of transaction they’re making. That, plus the fact that the result of a prostitute’s transaction has no victim, and the result of the press corps’ has thousands upon thousands.

I know who I think is in the nobler profession.

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Mann-date

by digby

To those of you who are in high dudgeon over Spitzer possibly violating the Mann Act — please. The Mann Act is bullshit in a situation where the parties were consensual. Here’s Wikipedia’s history of the Mann Act. It’s often been used for political purposes.

Obviously Spitzer’s in big trouble and is very likely to resign. When you build your career as a self righteous crusader, you don’t get the benefit of the doubt on stuff like this. But there are questions that should be asked. It is unusual to release the names of johns and it’s weird that we still don’t know why the feds were wiretapping on some seemingly inconsequential prostitution case in the first place. Is that something the feds spend a lot of time doing these days?

Far be it for me to mistrust the Bush Justice department or think they might have partisan motives, but it might be worth asking whether there might be a little partisan prosecutorial hanky panky involved. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

In any case, we should all try to do better than the media, which has let its tabloid id run free on this story today. I know it’s important, but you’d think they could at least get some of the facts straight before they spout every rumor they hear on the air.

I particularly like this one:

On MSNBC, photos of models with names like “Gemma” and “Winslow” pulled from a Web site — which the network said could be the one involved in the case — were flashed on the screen between old clips of Mr. Spitzer railing against corruption.

Oy.

Update: Jane Hamsher is asking the right questions.

More from Greenwald and Scott Horton

Update II: To be clear. I’m not saying the Mann Act doesn’t apply. I’m saying the Mann Act is a musty relic of Jim Crow that should never be applied to consensual sex. It was bad enough back in 1910. That anyone would use it in 2008 is outrageous.It should have been repealed long ago.

• Hoke v. United States (227 U.S. 308, 322) (1913). The Court held that Congress could not regulate prostitution per se, as that was strictly the province of the states. Congress could, however, regulate interstate travel for purposes of prostitution or “immoral purposes.”
• Athanasaw v. United States (227 U.S. 326, 328) (1913). The Court decided that the law was not limited strictly to prostitution, but to “debauchery” as well.
• Caminetti v. United States (242 U.S. 470, 484-85) (1917). The Court decided that the Mann Act applied not strictly to purposes of prostitution, but to other noncommercial consensual sexual liaisons. Thus consensual extramarital sex falls within the genre of “immoral sex.”
• Gebardi v. United States (287 U.S. 112) (1932). The Court held that the statutory intent was not to punish a woman’s acquiescence; therefore, consent by the woman does not expose her to liability.
• Cleveland v. United States (329 U.S. 14, 16-17) (1946). The Court decided that a person can be prosecuted under the Mann Act even when married to the woman if the marriage is polygamous. Thus polygamous marriage was determined to be an “immoral purpose.”
• Bell v. United States (349 U.S. 81, 83) (1955). The Supreme Court decided that simultaneous transportation of two women across state lines constituted only one violation of the Mann Act, not two violations.

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Your Candidate Isn’t Jesus

by dday

This is an object lesson into why you should not invest yourself so heavily into politicians.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer has informed his most senior administration officials that he had been involved in a prostitution ring, an administration official said this morning.

Mr. Spitzer, who was huddled with his top aides early this afternoon, had hours earlier abruptly canceled his scheduled public events for the day. He is set to make an announcement about 2:15 this afternoon at his Manhattan office.

Mr. Spitzer, a first-term Democrat who pledged to bring ethics reform and end the often seamy ways of Albany, is married with three children.

Just last week, federal prosecutors arrested four people in connection with an expensive prostitution operation. Administration officials would not say that this was the ring with which the governor had become involved.

I really, really liked Eliot Spitzer when he was a reformist Attorney General, and his campaign for Governor was first-rate. I could probably dig up my “Spitzer 2008” blog post from a couple years back. His first term in Albany was tumultuous but he’s generally proven himself a tough partisan fighter. But he’s a person, and people have their own issues and peccadilloes, and nobody should be particularly shocked. This is sad, more than anything.

But the larger point is that politicians are not demigods. They should not be seen as if they walk on water. They’re people and they’ve been given tremendous power and that can have a negative influence. In the current political fight, we should consider this and try to keep an even keel.

… It should be mentioned that if David Vitter can just say “this is between me and my wife and my Lord” and hang around for a while until the media forgets about it, there’s no real reason Spitzer has to resign. However, I don’t necessarily believe that the acceptable standard of conduct should be set by the likes of David Vitter.

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Note

by digby

Haloscan has been acting weird over the past few days, apparently because I decided to have the comment section moderated now and there was a technical glitch on some of the threads. It seems to be working on the new ones. Here are the ground rules. If you want to fight about the primary you can only do so when it is on topic (and they will still be moderated for abuse and general assholishness, as will all threads.) All comments about the primary on threads about other subjects will not be posted, so don’t waste your time.

The blogosphere is now in a nearly hysterical feedback loop that creates a certain intensity. That’s fine, but the comments tend to hurl out of control on every topic and it draws my nasty stalkers, wasting a lot of my time and emotional energy. There are tons of blogs eager to host a running conversation on the topic, so there’s no free speech issue and no lack of opportunity to wallow in the subject 24/7 if you like.

As always, I value all thoughtful commentary and appreciate everyone who comes here to read our scribbles.

Update: Ooops. Comments fubared again. Don’t assume that if something doesn’t show up it’s because I’m holding it.

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